


broken bodies all day long

by canisspiritus (renardroi)



Category: The Yogscast
Genre: Blood Magic, Blood and Injury, Death and Death-related gore idk, Gen, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-20
Updated: 2016-03-20
Packaged: 2018-05-27 21:16:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,159
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6300724
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/renardroi/pseuds/canisspiritus
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He’s forgotten what healthy feels like. Even and easy breaths, not having to listen to his heart beating in his chest and around his ears, the noise worming into his brain, and the heavy molasses feeling he has all the time now. Everything is such a great effort, like he’s wading through the viscous, congealing blood he manipulates.</p>
            </blockquote>





	broken bodies all day long

**Author's Note:**

  * For [sparxwrites](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sparxwrites/gifts).



At first Will misses the obvious signs of his own impending demise, having spent so much time, as of late, courting death, dancing around it, taking it out to dinner and staring into it with such familiarity. He’s forgotten what healthy feels like. Even and easy breaths, not having to listen to his heart beating in his chest and around his ears, the noise worming into his brain, and the heavy molasses feeling he has all the time now. Everything is such a great effort, like he’s wading through the viscous, congealing blood that he manipulates.

The allure, though, when he sees it all in his altar, is too much to resist. Rolling and tossing like a storm-caught sea, demanding his attention, his affection in some ways.

Morbidly, it reminds him of gardening. He cares for the magic daily - although the lack of sleep or light in his dungeon-like home makes it hard to tell if it’s truly been a day - gutting himself for the altar, letting the blood seep into the cracks of the stone basin that made the body of his altar, like water into earth. And the things he’s learned, they’re sweeter than any kind of fruit - they’re a different kind of ripe, though. A bloated, foul kind of ripe.

He must smell something awful. And as he feels his heart desperately try to pump something through countless broken veins, he regrets that he hasn’t showered to recently. What does he smell like? The blood, of course; it’s everywhere. But does he smell of death? Of impermanence? Is his body rotting yet in the humid warmth of this - this cave - this hole in the ground? How long has he been here?

He knows - well, he thinks he’s been here for weeks. Surely. Weeks of struggling with the magic. Too many times had he scooped up the blood with his hands, cupped like he’s going to dig dirt, and watched it seep between his fingers. Idly he’d wondered if eventually he might comb through the blood, and by some chance pull out something helpful, useful, like a trinket or a weapon, or some answer. He just wants answers. He needs to know - he needs to know what it means, or all of his work will be wasted. For nothing. All of this blood spilled in the great endeavor for knowledge that still escapes him.

And, really, who could blame him? There was so much to be gained from blood magic; red-stained reservoirs of vast and imparsable thoughts and ideas, waiting for his guilty hands to seek them out between the stygian rivulets running down his arms - although lately his arms are feeling more and more like old and frayed fabric, the individual threads of flesh falling away as he pulled at it more. He’s had to turn his attention to other parts of himself, like the previously smooth expanse of his chest and his abdomen. He is careful around his hips, though, the protruding bone startlingly sensitive to a blade - so much so that he’d rather risk tearing up his shoulder, because his hands shake in time with the hollow and uncertain breaths he takes, and he knows from experience that the jagged sacrificial knife grating against bone is more than unpleasant.

If he nicks the artery or the vein at his neck, it just means more blood. More blood for less pain. A decision he makes all too easily.

Will lets out a sigh, only slumping further into the altar, much of his right arm and shoulder now submerged in the noisy blood. He only realizes he hasn’t been breathing when he hears the sound of his sigh echo against the cold cave walls. And even as he realizes it, he wonders if it’s worth the effort to draw in breath. It’s such a task. He’s so tired.

At least, he thinks, the altar has done him this last service. It holds him up, cradling his upper half. He’s wedged into the cup of it, hips firmly against the rim, cheek resting on the opposite end, having slowly sunk down since he dipped his hand into the blood. It’s a bit like falling asleep, except he’s cold, he can’t feel his legs, there’s an ache under his ribs, and pain lancing up his spine and into the base of his skull.

Could be from lying like this. Limp, laid out across the stone like the offering that he is. The heavy silence is a plea of a sorts, to some unknowable idea.

He coughs, and winces, not from the pain of it but from the sharp ringing it leaves in his ears. Will closes his eyes, and again regrets that he hasn’t showered - or cleaned anything in who knows how long. Someone’s going to end up finding him like this. It might be weeks or months - or years - but inevitably he will be found. There’s a chance, he thinks, like the thought is a prayer to lady Tyche herself, that the doorway to this place is spelled and hidden well enough. That no one will know.

Sighing, his breath stirring the blood, he relaxes a little more. His shoulder dips dangerously, just barely kissing the red, and Will almost wants to let himself collapse completely into it. It’s so warm, where the air is too cold. If only he had the strength to draw the blood around him like a blanket.

As if responding to the movement - or perhaps the thought - he coughs suddenly, chokes, on blood rising his throat. The altar trembles - or he does, or both - and before he can comprehend what’s happening to himself, the magic wrings him out like a damp towel, leaving only hot pain in his chest.

It wasn’t worth it, he thinks, panic rising in his mouth like blood and bile. It couldn’t have been worth this. The humiliation, the manipulation, the torture. In his last manic thoughts, it’s only now he’s realizing what he’s leaving behind. Nothing.

Nothing.

Sure he’s left a few things. Mountains of notes on the blood magic, the bare necessities he’s been living with. But beneath it all there isn’t a single sentiment, memory or otherwise that isn’t him alone and dying. How long has he been dying? He struggles to recall what even a single one of his friends looks like, but the only image he conjures up is that of the blood long since abandoned at his feet. It may be only in this moment that the blood in his altar is reaching up for him, desperately trying to drown Will in his own blood, but his decay should have been obvious from the start.

It seems like he should cry or mourn or do something, but he can’t struggle like this. He’s too tired. And still in the back of his mind he’s hopeful. Maybe now he’ll have earned what he’s looking for, and then he will have earned some rest.


End file.
